Heigh-ho, heigh-ho. it’s back to the mines we go. We’d already done one tour of the sprawling Wieilizca Salt Mines, just outside Krakow, Poland. But that was merely the “Tourist Route”. This time we were earning our stars on the “Miners Route”, which would take us to different portions of the mine complex (and there are miles and miles of it to choose from) and get a sampling, we are promised, of how the miners lived and worked. We shall see.

It’s another frigid day as we board the bus for the half-hour ride from Krakow to Wielizca, where we get off at the same place as before, but we won’t be entering the mine at the same entrance. The starting point for this tour is a block or so away, and it’s rather challenging to find — good thing we arrive plenty early.

The signs we are supposed to follow are confusing; we have to go across the street, then across a big plaza, past some displays honoring Pope John Paul II (who was a product of Krakow), until we finally locate the entrance to a lobby where we are told to sit and wait. There are just a handful of others waiting for this tour, and eventually the full contingent will reach only about a dozen — not nearly as many as took the touristy tour, the wimps.

After a few minutes, along comes our guide, a fellow named Stefan, who checks us in and leads us to the lockers, where we will stash any cumbersome belongings and don gray coveralls — not as snazzy as the bright green coveralls he wears, but they’ll do. We’re also issued a hard hat with a lantern mounted on it — unlike on the tourist route, we have to illuminate our own path — and two shoulder packs: one containing a battery for the lantern, and one containing an oxygen mask in case of emergency. The impression they try to give you is that things could get rather gritty and grubby down there. But this appears to be mere performance art, especially given that under Stefan’s coveralls, he is wearing a necktie.

Then Stefan leads us to the elevators where we will descend into the nether regions. His diction is fair to middling — his command of English is okay, but he has a heavy accent and doesn’t speak very clearly. He’s amusing in a way, but also a bit annoying at times. He tries to pose as a demanding foreman of the mines, who assigns us physical tasks to do that seem rather capricious. And also rather sexist, at least at first — he doesn’t appear to want to give the females any task that is very physical.

He does have one woman climb up on a little platform and collect an air sample to test for methylene — which presumably would force an evacuation in large quantities. It appears, however, that this little ritual is all for show, a bit of dramatic flair to add to the realism of the scenario we’re halfway acting out.

Meanwhile, the dudes are able to do some heavy-duty sawing of wood with a “buddy saw”. which Dennis is tapped to operate one side of. And in this instance, our green-clad taskmaster is quite exacting, demanding that we carry the task out to completion. It isn’t on any old tourist attraction that you work hard enough to break out into a sweat even at 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Several pairs of participants saw off sections of a log in this manner, and then Stefan breaks them into pieces with a tool and gives each participant one of them as a souvenir. (Later, we pass ours along to a lady who has expressed an interest in accumulating such things and using them in some kind of art project. We’re happy to relinquish the space in our already-crammed baggage.)

It’s about this time that our conductor finally notices Dennis is wearing sandals, and becomes quite solemn about it. Now at the moment, Dennis has no other suitable footwear; with the foot problems he’s been having, sandals are just about the only thing he can wear comfortably, and he does so in all kinds of weather, shielding his little piggies from the cold with thick socks, and covering the whole schmear with galoshes in rain and snow. [This situation would be remedied soon in the Czech Republic, where he’d finally be able to find comfortable shoes.]

“Do you have any other shoes”, Stefan asks. “No”, says Dennis. “You cannot take the tour in those”, comes the stern reply.

And for a moment we’re afraid one of us is going to be sent back to the surface. But then surely they wouldn’t risk having someone make that trip unescorted, would they? So would the guide go back with him, maybe taking the entire group along before returning to resume the itinerary from the same point? Or maybe he would somehow send for an assistant to be the escort?

He seems to be carefully weighing all of these options for a moment, then he finally just shrugs it off and says, “If I had seen those at the beginning, I would not have let you come.” And we resume with a big sigh of relief. But kiddies, be warned to have proper shoes if you ever embark on a tour like this.

In truth, Dennis has never had an issue with the sandals, in any kind of terrain. He’s hiked mountains in them, he’s walked the beach in them, he’s walked through desert in them, he’s put in many a mile on city pavement in them. All with no problem.

And despite Stefan’s reservations about them, he shortly thereafter asks Dennis if he can crawl under a timber that is about a foot off the ground. This Dennis does with relative ease, and then punctuates the point that he is not hampered by the sandals, nor his age bracket, nor anything else, by crawling under a couple of more timbers, as two or three other guys follow in his crawling trail.

And soon, Stefan seems to lower his gender filter as well, asking the women folk to get involved in some heavier tasks. Kimberly and another lady are able to provide the horsepower to crank a big wheel; and then Kimberly also is assigned the responsibility of pulverizing some salt rock in what looks like a large mortar and pestle set.

Near the end of our route, we’re ushered into one of the 40 underground chapels that miners hewed out and used over the centuries. This one, like another one we visited on the Tourist Route, has a chandelier — made, like everything else down here, out of rock salt.

At this point Stefan switches off the chandelier, and bids us extinguish our headlamps as well. Then we sit in the dark for a bit, and after the lights come back on, he asks us to guess how long we were in the dark — the point of this experiment being that darkness distorts a person’s sense of time. The correct answer is two minutes, but sometimes, he says, participants make guesses that are wildly wrong, in one direction or another. In our case, however, the experiment is not a smashing success, because each of us made a guess that is quite within the ballpark. Guess we’d all make good moles.

Another little “special effect” we have sprung on us is a fake explosion as we stand on a rickety platform. Not very convincing, but it’s the thought that counts.

And then comes the end of the tour, where we’re presented with our certificates of achievement. We’re now bona fide genuine real McCoy minors or something or other. We know we haven’t undergone the same kind of experiences as the actual guys who dug in these rocks centuries ago. But we daresay we’re at least as accomplished as Sneezy, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Doc or Bashful.

Events occurred: 2/28/205